Professor's winning design stems from need for easier handling

The Martini glass — with a twist

Published 5:30 am, Saturday, May 29, 2004

For a guy who has already created a "blood pen" — with real blood — for signing peace treaties, coming up with a winning idea for a new martini glass was no big deal.

"I started looking at how people held their martini glasses, and I realized with a tall glass, it's hard to hold by the stem. But holding the bowl of the glass warms up the liquid," said David Tsai, 33, who recently finished third place in the Bombay Sapphire Global Glass Design Competition for the United States.

Tsai, a visiting professor with the University of Houston Industrial Design program, designed a "short" martini glass shielded with a round layer of glass that keeps body heat away from the classic triangle holding the chilly gin (or vodka) concoction.

"Whenever you're designing something as iconic as a martini glass, you can't go too far away from the original, so I maintained the triangular shape and the hint of a stem," Tsai said. "It could also be a cup — it's an inverse image."

In 2002, Tsai was a winner in the Core77 International Design Competition and recipient of the Bombay Sapphire Prize for his "Blood Pen," which actually pierces the forefinger of the user and draws the blood through the tip onto a page.

"The ultimate use of the blood pen is in signing a peace treaty to end war," Tsai wrote in his description of the pen for the contest. "Using the blood pen in this instance ceremoniously ends the conflict with one last act of bloodshed."

For his martini glass, Tsai won a 20-inch Apple flat-panel cinema display monitor. His glass, as one of the top three winners, was created by Dallas artist Brad Oldham (brother of the furniture/fashion designer Todd Oldham), and is now on tour in Europe.

The first-place prize went to Andrea Dionisio, 26, a graduate of the Parsons School of Design, for a martini glass called "Oliva," a teardrop-shaped glass with a removable base that holds the olive.